Webwanderer wrote:
As to knowing the truth first, how would one determine that?

I don't know. I suppose I have some faith in the awakened who say that truth exists.

karmarider wrote:

snowheight wrote:
karma', by "truth" are you referring to something non-dual and beyond the mind? (...sorry, this seems pretty clear in context but rather than assume ... also interested in your answer ...)

Yes.

Which begs the questions what is non-dual and what is beyond the mind.

For fun I can offer three ways to conceive of what is beyond the mind. The first two are easy to understand. First there is the point that the map is not the territory -- the "taste of honey" is the most often used expression of this idea. Second, following the root of this point -- that the mind abstracts at the cost of detail -- we can consider the amount of information inherent in the simplest of everyday objects (how many atoms in a coffee cup? how are they arranged? how do they interact?) is beyond the capacity of the mind to hold and process.

The third is unrelated but is based on the nature of the senses and the material world, and includes the answer to the first question about non-duality, which itself is beyond the mind. Everything that is perceived in sight, sound, touch, taste and smell is perceived by way of contrast, by way of absence or degree of non-absence. As you read these words you process the signal of the contrast between the letters and the background. When you listen to someone speak it is the time-varying amplitude of air pressure at your eardrum which your brain perceives.

Our minds are also based on these building blocks of contrast: any abstract concept has an opposite and in consideration we see that the opposites depend on and define one another. There is no love without hate, no hot without cold no up without down etc. etc.

And powerful minds have tread specific conceptual paths which point up how profoundly dualistic the physical world is -- Einstein shows us that two people traveling relative to one another will not agree on the length of a ruler.

So let's try to use these inherently dualistic tools of mind and senses to ponder this non-duality and somehow render it in the dualistic elements of the physical world. Close your eyes and think about it ... what comes to mind? A circle? A sphere? A center point at which you imagine yourself to be or imagine yourself to see from some distance and from which the whole emanates and surrounds? -- doesn't that suppose some boundary?, some eventual perimeter? how can the mind embrace infinity?

In trying to conceive of the non-dual whole we fail because our dualistic tools require these boundaries and perimeters. Even just the simple act of conception is an act of separation in that it requires us to define the conception itself as a distinct entity apart from ourselves <-- this is the primary and direct explanation that puts the non-dual, that which non-duality points toward, beyond the mind. This is another way of stating the recursive subject/object split best known by the question "who gets enlightened?".

It seems to me that it is an expression of the paradox that the mind can understand that there is something that it can't understand. Obviously, this faith you have in those who are awake who say that truth exists are basing what they say on experience beyond the mind, and this experience goes beyond this understanding that there is something that can't be understood ... kind of like:

Webwanderer wrote:
As one's consciousness is raised, or awakened, out of the egoic perspective, the need for control abates and becomes more in line with its original purpose - to create in terms of harmony and an understanding of oneness. Control transforms into creative evolution.

I let my mind's spikes on the phrases such as "understanding of oneness" or "creative evolution" abate, because they are not ultimately for it's consumption. If I remember correctly Tolle says early on that all words are initially read by the mind ... the mind serves as an initial agent of perception, but we glean the pointer by letting further thought and analysis drop away.

If, instead of dropping away, our mind instead winds the way to an image of grass-skirts flying up in the fall into the mouth of a volcano then there might be no telling of whether it was the presentation or the experience of the presentation which leads us there.

Stop talking. Hear every sound as background. Look straight ahead and focus. Take one deep breath. This is you. This is Now.